Post War Blog 2
In Jarvis’s article If He Comes Home Nervous, Jarvis gives us examples of how psychiatric help was just beginning to be discussed in the 1940’s. She explains how different authors reacted to the idea of war veteran’s having psychological disabilities after being in combat. Many of them opposed the idea of getting these men help because it took away from their “manliness” but other authors argued that it was normal and that many great war heroes suffered from many psychological disabilities like Caesar and Alexander the Great. There were many experiments and ideas tested on veterans, some of them pictured them in different ranges of emotion until the veteran was considered healed or “normal.”
In Total War Entitlement: Towards a Global History of Veteran Privilege, Crotty and Edele explain to us the forward movement of veteran’s wellbeing. They discuss the relationship of warfare and welfare. During the 1980’s veterans began to lobby for their rights as civilians and the benefits they thought they should receive after participating in combat. They show us the differences between the Soviets and the Australians. The Australians had a much better welfare program for their veterans even though the first real war they participated in was World War I and it was completely volunteers. The Soviet’s veteran programs were much harsher and were based on a hierarchy of who was more loyal to the Soviet Union as a whole.
Rats and Resentment, Dale explains to us that the Soviets who returned home to Leningrad weren’t granted the explosive welcome home that was shown in the press. The veterans were celebrated for a propaganda campaign that was created to tell civilians to care for the veteran’s wellbeing. Most of the veteran’s were waiting months and years to return home. The soldiers wanted to escape demobilization and the army and return home. Families and veterans were disappointed and their hopes were destroyed when they realized that their wartime dreams weren’t coming true. Many soldiers struggled to find employment. Dale explains to us that the end of war extravaganza just wasn’t what it seemed.
Jarvis, C. (2009). “If He Comes Home Nervous”: U.S. World War II Neuropsychiatric Casualties and Postwar Masculinities. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 17(2), 97-115. doi:10.3149/jms.1702.97
Crotty, M., & Edele, M. (2013). Total War and Entitlement: Towards a Global History of Veteran Privilege. Australian Journal of Politics & History, 59(1), 15-32. doi:10.1111/ajph.12001
Dale, R. (2010). Rats and Resentment: The Demobilization of the Red Army in Postwar Leningrad, 1945–50. Journal of Contemporary History, 45(1), 113-133. doi:10.1177/0022009409348964
I enjoyed that you touched on each article that we read in class in your blogpost. I liked how you emphasized that different people discussed PTSD in conflicting ways. People either pushed it under the rug because they believed it threatened “manliness”, while others pointed out that it was a normal reaction to war and even great military leaders such as Alexander the Great suffered from it. It makes me question which approach was more successful and accepted by the public and health professionals at the time? Were returning veterans more likely to get help for their issues if they knew that “great men” who obtained power went through the same things as them?
I like how you clearly gave a summary of each article. Although, I think your blog could be more powerful if you connected the articles more. Especially the later two. I thought it was interesting to read the article about Australia vs. the USSR, then later find out that the USSR was struggling financially to support its veterans and that many soviet vets did not return home until years after the war. It was alarming to read about the number of vets that society did not recognized for their efforts if they came home mentally scared. However, I find it curious that the catch-all term, “shell shock”, was used after WW1, but by the end of WW2 was hardly in use. We seem to be quick to criticize the treatment of psychological traumatized veterans after the war. However, we also have the benefit of nearly 75 years of hindsight. With that in mind maybe we should ask ourselves not how bad conditions were for veterans, but actually, how much better they had become.